Cherry lip glossed magazines

Flung against blonde hair stained ultraviolet

I don’t know what more she wants from me

Eyes wide like stars

Supernovas begging to burn out

One day, I’ll conquer the galaxy and take you with me

Andromeda and Artemis

Poseidon isn’t the hero this time

She whispers against my fluttering heart

The only part of me susceptible to her deceit

Loosened ties and wrinkled blouses

We’re too in love to care

Too wrong to think straight

We are sixteen and balanced on the verge

Of nothing and everything

Of sitting by and letting the world chase us down

Or running at it head on fearlessly

And we choose neither

Because we think we’ve still got time

She says, "do you love me?"

I lie because it's all I know how to do

Her cranberry acrylic nails carve scripture into my palm

And I tell myself it means something to be worthy of even being touched by her

Shadows and make-believe

We thought we outgrew those in childhood

Empty smiles, hard, unmoving, unflinching

She never says she loves me, only asks if I return the sentiment

And it never occurs to me that this is strange until long after she is gone in a whirlwind of faceless men and playing pretend

Youthful romantism

We’re sixteen and beautiful

Cruel and indifferent

Naïve and innocent, just a façade though

Immature and carelessly

Dancing over gravestones of lost loves that came before

Nothing can stop us

Nothing will change us

She was looking for someone to love her

And all she found was me

trigger warning: mentions of death

sea salt fields take me in

olive oil blooms at my feet;

in a golden rush i sometimes forget what it means

to be young and free.

a girl my age died this week-

she tried escaping what we all lived to be.

i didn’t know her,

but i knew her meaning.

i never spoke to her,

but i miss her being here.

the mortar and pestle grind my teeth

the sun on my back makes my mother tense;

i wanted to feel the wind on my face

she’ll never understand my summer tan, my lack of sense.

i put the food in my mouth

do as i’m told

because i made it,

grasp at the smoke before my eyes

miss out on words

because i ate them.

everything is heady and bright and hot and you’re in your room with the cat trying to consume mary shelley’s frankenstein and thinking about sex on your mother’s grave and you think about the form slumbering at your feet and how it’s strange that there is another living breathing thing with you in the room that has millions of complex processes going on and it’s almost too much to think about your own body not the outside but the inside- and then you think how strange it is that we walk and talk with each other while our hearts beat unsure unsure of themselves and we all have veins and they’re all working at the same time while we walk and talk and think with each other and maybe it’s just the heatwave but a little patience and all will be over but you have to think quickly quickly on your deathbed unless you’re like me and have had your last words picked out for ages and the books on hold at the library will be ready soon and you’re spending every moment thinking about them and you realize it’s not a hunger not like the one richard wright described it’s a lust for books not knowledge but books the pages paper letters ink all of it because wow those oxford commas taste amazing on your tongue so you never stop and the electric current makes you shiver and everything is hyperfocused the heat beneath your skirt the hairs on your skin the way your foot is curled unceremoniously underneath the way your heel digs into your thigh the way the sun hits the window the way your breath comes shallowly so you finally spread out and rest your head down and try to sleep and forget everything but your mind won’t be ignored for long so you turn over and draw your knees together and stretch without stretching and it satiates you, if only for a little while.

we stood on the bus as the downpour flooded

in & in

& in

& in.

the windows wept, and for once we understood

something about their cold glass hearts. the way they

watched & listened. you clung to me like a stray cat

who had found its owner again, and for once i understood

the hunger of the animal. looking down at you and wanting to think

of nothing but the water. our clothes clung to our backs

like matted fur in the cold wash of the stoplights.

unforgiving. turning every person to ice. the winter came

and froze our hands over, so we forgot the shape of our own bodies.

we closed our mouths to keep our hearts warm. mother nature

wired her jaw shut. stopped telling us stories

of flowers & birthings & brightness. in the middle of the night

i awoke, and i pressed my fingers to your wrist to remember

we were alive, and the summer bled warm and sweet within.

I am too old             to feel             like this            again.

    The age old adages have come back to haunt me.

    Knives are like words from my ex best friend’s throat.

                                         And she lured me in, snakelike

                                         until I couldn’t see

                                         anything.

Not anything

at all

anymore.

Did you see the lights flicker?                Oh, but the stars shine

just for you.

It’s all an illusion,           it’s a game.       They feed me propaganda

and I spit it back for a grade

/in perfect unison/

I’m starting to agree I’m something punk rock

sorta vibe. I’m starting to hurt my ears just so I can’t hear what’s inside.

I’m starting to agree my anger is justified,

my breath of fresh air, electrified; all the wrong reasons, intensified;

glorified;

and they think me petrified           but the level I’m on made the pastors cry.

I can’t see the surface.                                               If I scream will my voice still be amplified?

That’s why:

I spit it into rough syllables, scream it in decibels

            /past a thousand/

write it in legible chalk on the ground and let                             people look and look past it

                                cause it might make someone uncomfortable.

                                     I haven’t been this way in ages

         been angry in enough to spit words and fill pages and

say everything I been holding back for fear of the rage might make someone afraid

                                                                             and not like what I have to say 

but screw it.

I’d rather have no friends and get all my words out then a party of friends

and an ache in my mouth                                         from keeping shut and quitting.

I ask my friends why I’m special to them and they chime back in eulogy,

list my awards in chronology like I am now their trophy wife.

               Rather, the real life 

               Trophy Mistress, Best Friend Resistance Part II (to you)

I’ve lived the way they make me say hello at parties.

It makes me uncomfortable.

Man, I’m singing now too, join me in my debut and we’ll put skulls on the cover and call it

anger. 

“Your writing is beautiful.”

“If it is then I haven’t done my job.”

I don’t recognize the ghostwriter I had last year

who occupied time trying for flowery language people’d call correct and only remember for a day.

I can’t say it that way, I can only make sounds             My voice is garbled and unsure of itself.

(but here’s verse one.)

And now my hair’s all messed up and I’m thinking of shaving it

and my parents say I’m a train wreck just waiting to happen

but at least this image tattoos itself into y’all’s brains and it makes into a double.

(I really need braces--imagine if they were affordable.)

I question everything, the people on the street are in my head again,

the sun is a knife and it cuts through my skin again

and let’s let people see things I’ve tramp stamped to my skeleton,.

I long to make them understand but once you’ve past the age it’s not something you’ll

taste again. I’m glad for their sake, then.

I’d hate to make anyone uncomfortable.

Besides, seventeen tastes too much like bile.

We turn temptation into reality in the heady night air. The cherry wine loaned from pantries that aren't ours comforts our evening sorrows, and we hoard every other drop like it's gold and we're Golem. We flash adolescence with every smile, as close to happy as any of us have ever known. Starlight cradles us and the moon rocks us in place of the magicians that didn't quite raise us. And we all understand that curiousity is an innately human trait so we hardly bother to brush off the feeling of l'appel du vide when we get too close to the edge of the building. It's not romanticism; it's a coping mechanism. It makes our poetry turn into three pages, single-spaced, no paragraphs that would make our old English teachers feign sickness to get out of grading it. So yeah, we all burned out in eighth grade and have been resting on Hephaestion's last laurel for the last half a decade. All Icarus, all falling. Clutching frayed rope with no end in sight, we cling to hope because it's all we've got left. Buckets of broken dreams are dumped out as we catch moonlight in our open fists, and it stays there. It's not curious or waiting for the perfect opportunity to fly away. We all know the feeling of being the weakest dragonfly in the garden and having your last hope be a closed fist. Our sentences are too long; our minds too rampant with excessive pressure and fear, and- I'd like to go home, but the last beam of sunlight shoots Apollo's last-thrown discus over the horizon, and we all inhale because, god, if that isn't breathtaking. Like getting punched in the gut, we all clutch our throats and stare. Such a pretty view to cry to. Our hands, ashy and frail and always shaking no matter the circumstances, look like searchlights trying to find a rhythm that dancing to doesn't feel like a last surge of energy from a terminal patient. The intrusive thoughts overwhelm the beat, but we keep swaying until the sun rises, casting shadows on our cheekbones and painting the world golden. It's times like these that make dying irrelevant because on the bad days when it seems like the only fair option on a multiple choice question, the afternoon rendezvous that turn into midnight memories make the universe crystal clear such that we all realize that process of elimination dictates it is a fool's error. On the good days that follow, we can barely remember why the sadness set in, and if we can, we realize that the happy days far outnumber the bad ones.

i think marigold is the color of

childhood, or at least the color of mine. memories

dipped in deep mustard, touched

gentle amber with the passages of time.

i think marigold is the color of

innocence, or at least the charade of it. rubbing

playing cards tinted ochre under my calloused

thumbs, sticking fingers in lunchtable holes.

i think marigold is the color of

childish love, or at least the high of it. mashing

buttons on the family wii, pinky promises

sworn under glow-in-the-dark stars.

and i think marigold is the color of

a time now lost, and the aftermath of wistfulness

paints the sketches in.

i arrange my bones into a neat pile

and push them across the table to you.

in response you break me in half

like a wishbone. heart first. i laid out knives

but you don’t eat with one tonight. instead you throw it at the wall

and smile with fine china teeth. the house

shudders and moans and cries. house that was already wounded

now a martyr. house that was already haunted

now a ghost. if i stand outside and watch

i can see you through the walls,

frying onions and humming along to joni mitchell. this house does not have heroes.

this house did not prepare itself for war. you raise your voice

and we stumble into battle like inexperienced dancers. house follows.

house can only follow. house listens and reacts. i’m sorry,

but not about the things i said to you. i’m sorry, and i say it

to the ceiling, crying plaster onto my head. be quiet now,

and go to sleep. it’s past midnight. we don’t do tears much here,

but you know that. you know too much. i’m sorry.

after leila chatti

No birds. No stars. No one remembering how they’re

dead but how brilliant they are. No one saying that

the sun’s just another star, no shaping it in the face of

a lover long lost. No more other realities. No more other lives.

The truth is that we get this one and then we blow it

before we ever had the chance. Again, no birds. No more

metaphors about how they’re flying and how they’re free.

I can’t stand being so full of envy anymore. No more you.

Who in God’s name is the you, ever, anyways? This poem

isn’t for you. I want it to be for me. I want to be selfish in

a piece for once. I’m so tired nowadays. There are no

bird wings or Greek muses that could change that. I’m scared,

and it is not poetic. There is no rebirth that makes this better.

It doesn’t matter that we see the same moon at night, or

the fact that you can pretend I’m the lover stuck in it. I’m just

angry all the time that it saw you first. Would you still love me

if you didn’t have to. If I didn’t say that you’re the one in some

flash fiction piece where you save me. Would you still love me if

you knew how hopeless I was. I said this poem wasn’t for you, but

maybe I’m just angry all the time that you can only appear in stanzas,

anyways. I will make no euphemisms. I am hurt and alone.

how i’d like to introduce myself: lately i find myself thinking about how we once

fell asleep when the sun set and awoke when it rose. how the earth used to cradle us, guide us in two palms like a second mother. back when we were just vessels that slept and touched and ate & not this strange writhing struggle of a thing

that must always bare its teeth. when did we manage to escape from her arms,

plant our feet, place our fists around mother nature’s throat?

this is how i introduce myself to the sea. i am careful.

i say don’t worry. i will apologize when i kiss you. the sea responds:

in my dreams i am always in danger. in my dreams i am a woman with cotton fists.

i tell her i wish to be knee deep in the water like my ancestors.

i wish to be knee deep in this beautiful earth, in anything at all.

to know feeling like the women before me. in the tender grasp of the waves

i take pictures of the earth like she is a lover who will

disappear tomorrow. i am digging my fingernails

into this cliff face of a world. what a place with her lonely wild eyes.

i want to tell her it’ll all be okay, though it won’t. want to tell her

not to take flight yet, though she should.

i want to say give us a minute. maybe we’ll work it out.

but the road stretches empty and crude.

and the sea yawns wide and tired, catching devils in its open mouth.

and the world says:

if there was an ocean big enough to hold me

i would wade into it and never return.